Promises To Keep
by Itsuwari
Summary: 20 years ago, Ron tried to save Harry from Voldemort, but was killed in the process. Now a Hogwarts professor, Hermione has only one thing connecting her to the man she loved. And the man she loved is still trying to get back to her. R/Hr
1. Part 1

**Title:** Promises To Keep (1/3)   
**Author** **name**: Itsuwari   
**Author e-mail:** AngelKinomoto@aol.com   
**Category:** Angst/Romance   
**Keywords:** Ron, Hermione, R/H   
**Rating:** PG   
**Spoilers:** None really.   
**Summary:** 20 years ago, Ron tried to save Harry from Voldemort, but was killed in the process. Now a Hogwarts professor, Hermione has only one thing connecting her to the man she loved. And the man she loved is still trying to get back to her. R/Hr 

**Promises To Keep**

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. 

Author's Note: What happens when you take a break from writing oh-no-Cedric-is-dead-and-I-can-never-love-again!Cho to write a little R/H? *points down* That. Many thanks to my three fantastic beta readers, Mandy, Lizzy, and Lifesend. 

---- 

"Professor Granger is hot." Hermione rolled her eyes. The things some students carved on their desks. Hot indeed. It would definitely be Michael Malfoy who had carved that one. His father, although civil to Hermione for his wife's sake, would not approve. Speaking of them, although she hadn't been, she needed to send Draco and Ginny yet another owl about their son's behavior. Ginny would have a fit when she got it, and would probably send a pair of howlers to the twins for providing him with an unlimited supply of joke shop items to give them free advertising around Hogwarts. 

Hermione calmly touched her wand to the desk and muttered the familiar spell to repair the wood. Professor Flitwick had never come this far back to erase the students' crude carvings on the desks. While she was much more diligent about removing such graffiti from school property than her teacher had been, she could never bring herself to erase one carving on a desk in the back corner. 

During their seventh year, Ron had always sat at that desk. She had never figured out exactly why he had sat there, but she was often grateful that he had, because Professor Flitwick had never cleared this desk. And the heart, with the letters RW+HG, had been her only connection to Ron for 20 years. 

She had no idea how many hours she'd wasted over the course of her career standing here, running her fingers through the endless trails of dust that filled the rough carving, pondering what might have happened had Ron not tried to save Harry's life. There would be a house in Hogsmeade, no doubt, and bunches of little redheaded children to chase after and take care of. Funny that she'd never really wanted children before, but somehow, now, she wanted Ron's children almost as much as she wanted Ron. 

"Some promise, Ron," she thought almost bitterly, her mind wandering back to the night before he'd gone. 

_"If you go, I might never see you again. And Harry- well, you can't help him now. No one can."_

_"I have to try. And I promise you, Hermione. I will come back. No matter what happens, I will come back."_

_Before she could say anything else, Ron has kissed her into a silence. And somehow, Hermione found that it was her hand, not his, that reached for the broom closet door that night._

Even in the dim moonlight, the man's red hair was a sharp contrast to the pale snow that filled the deep forest. The white streaks in this fiery red mane were, although none who saw him realized it, the marks left behind from his hard fought battle to get out of death's clutches. His breath came in ragged gasps. He had won. He had won, and now he could return to Hogwarts, and to her. He threw back his head and laughed. It was too good to be true, and yet, it was. He was going home. 

_These woods are lovely, dark, and deep._   
_But I have promises to keep,_   
_And miles to go before I sleep,_   
_And miles to go before I sleep._   
_-Robert Frost, Stopping By The Woods On A Snowy Evening_   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	2. Part 2

**Title:** Promises To Keep (2/3)   
**Author name:** Itsuwari   
**Author e-mail:** AngelKinomoto@aol.com   
**Category:** Angst/Romance   
**Keywords:** Ron, Hermione, R/H   
**Rating:** PG   
**Spoilers: **None really.   
**Summary:** 20 years ago, Ron tried to save Harry from Voldemort, but was killed in the process. Now a Hogwarts professor, Hermione   
has only one thing connecting her to the man she loved. And the man she loved is still trying to get back to her. R/Hr 

**Promises To Keep**

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. 

Author's Note: Thanks to Lizzy and Lifesend for beta-ing this chapter, and to Mandy, who couldn't, because she's on vacation. Also, a zillion thanks to the reviewers who encouraged me to write more, although I'd planned to end it after the last bit, but y'all inspired the plot bunnies to attack. Also if the whole "spirits" thing makes no sense to you, the basic idea is that there is a kind of wizarding afterlife or something, where they're like ghosts, but stuck in the underworld, unless they can complete a series of impossible tasks and return to being a mortal. Most don't even try. As you probably should with understanding it. 

**Part Two**   
---- 

_"Avada Kedavra!"_

_Ron stared as his best friend simply stood there as the terrible killing curse was thrown at him. Harry didn't try to duck out of the way, or block it with one of the defense spells he was so good at. He almost smiled as the green light sped toward him. What did he think he was doing?_   


_Ron opened his mouth to cry out to Harry "Duck!" but no words came out. Harry crumpled, lifelessly, to the ground. However, the green light that had so swiftly delivered him to his end was not finished. The curse reflected away from the scar on Harry's forehead back to the one who had sent it. Only as the evil that had represented everything Ron had ever come to fear fell dead upon the ground, did Ron realize that Harry had sacrificed himself to kill Voldemort through the scar that connected them._

_It was then that he realized he was screaming._

_His last image was one of a masked man pointing a wand at him. Then there was a flash of bright green light, and the world spun away from beneath his feet._

Ron trudged through the snow, starting to feel fatigued, although he hadn't been walking all that long. His legs felt heavy and out of shape, as if he hadn't used them in about twenty years. Which, he reminded himself, he hadn't. He hadn't even had legs for the last twenty years. 

The more steps he took, the more Ron understood why most people chose to remain spirits after their death. Very few of them felt that what they had to go back to was worth the trouble of getting back. Being a spirit was so much easier, as you could go anywhere at will-- so long as it was in the confines of the underworld. This confinement was why he'd tried to do the impossible and escape the underworld to be a mortal again. He couldn't just sit there and enjoy being dead while Hermione was out there, waiting for him to keep his promise. 

Or was she? A sudden flicker of doubt passed through Ron's mind. He had every bit of faith that Hermione still loved him, but even she wouldn't sit around for two decades waiting for someone she knew to be dead to come back and keep a promise. She would have moved on by now, certainly. She wasn't stupid. Ron placed his hand on the nearest tree trunk and slumped against it. What had he been thinking? Why had he put all this effort into coming back to someone who wouldn't even been waiting for him? 

He stared into the softly falling snow blankly for what seemed like hours, never taking a step forward. Finally, fatigue and sorrow overcame him, and he drifted off into a restless sleep. 

_My little horse must think it queer_   
_To stop without a farmhouse near_   
_Between the woods and frozen lake_   
_The darkest evening of the year._

_He gives his harness bells a shake_   
_To ask if there is some mistake._   
_The only other sound's the sweep_   
_Of easy wind and downy flake._   
_-Robert Frost, Stopping By The Woods On A Snowy Evening_

Hermione sighed. It was going to have to go. She'd made Michael stay after class that afternoon to explain his senseless and continual graffitting of Hogwarts property. His only response had been to calmly and respectfully explain to her that "Professor Granger, I've been sitting at this desk for six years. Every time I come back to class, my carving on the desk is gone, but the other one isn't. I'll stop, when you correct what someone else did, not just my doings." 

It had mystified her that someone who she'd always considered her problem student had such a strong sense of justice, and claimed this as his only motivation for breaking the rules, and while she didn't entirely believe this, she had to admit that he had a point. Still, she'd tried to justify leaving Ron's carving there, but her own strong sense of justice had convinced her that she had to get rid of the heart. 

She touched her wand to the desk. It was pointless to cry over something so stupid as getting rid of a carving- no, grafitti, it was easier to get rid of it if she thought of it that way- on a desk. And yet, she was. This was the only piece of Ron she had left. She murmured the erasure spell, and it disappeared.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	3. Part 3

**Title:** Promises To Keep (3/3)   
**Author name:** Itsuwari   
**Author e-mail:** shermif@hotmail.com   
**Category: **Angst/Romance   
**Keywords:** Ron, Hermione, R/H   
**Rating:** PG   
**Spoilers:** None really.   
**Summary:** 20 years ago, Ron tried to save Harry from Voldemort, but was killed in the process. Now a Hogwarts professor, Hermione   
has only one thing connecting her to the man she loved. And the man she loved is still trying to get back to her. R/Hr 

**Promises To Keep**

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening is by Robert Frost, and again, no copyright infringment is intended. 

Author's Note: I'm finished! Finally! Yaaaaaaaay! Thanks to my lovely betas, Lizzy and Lifesend. 

----------------------------   
**Part Three**

_Whose woods these are I think I know._   
_His house in in the village, though;_   
_He will not see me stopping here_   
_To watch his woods fill up with snow._

Hermione sat at her desk, grading essays from her sixth years on which charms they thought were most useful in the everyday life of an adult wizard. Or trying to grade them, anyway. It had been an hour since she'd finished her classroom cleanup and gotten started, and she was still stuggling through the second roll of parchment on the first essay in the pile. Her eyes kept wandering away from her work and across the room, to the spot on the desk in the far corner that had, until a little while ago, held Ron's carving. 

That tiny space seemed ten times bigger than the whole rest of the large classroom, a black hole, sucking the existence of everything else within view to become her entire world. Staring at the empty space, Hermione felt as if she'd murdered something by erasing it. A drop of cold sweat dripped down her face. 

Finally, she could take it no more. She picked up the stack of parchment rolls and carried it into her adjacent office, sat down, and got back to work. In less than ten minutes, she'd finished grading four of the essays, and had just begun a fifth when she pushed her quill into the ink bottle a bit too hard, and it snapped. She lightly opened one of her numerous desk drawers and pulled out a replacement. As soon as she had picked it up, however, she let out a scream so loud it could be heard at the top of the tallest astronomy tower. 

Underneath the quill was a photograph of her with Ron. Hermione had never seen this photograph before, and was certain that it hadn't been in the drawer that morning when she'd called Michael in for questioning. She remembered the occasion, a small common room party for Ron's 18th birthday, clearly, but not even Colin Creevy had had a camera. 

She stared at the picture in horror for several seconds before dropping both quill and parchment amd running, running as fast as she could, out of her office, her classroom, through the corridors, and out of Hogwarts entirely. 

The sight of Ron's face, even just in a photograph, reminded her of his promise to come back, no matter what. She had promised to wait for him, and for the twenty years he'd been missing, she had, but today, she had broken that promise. Images of him surrounded her, pounding her brain until she was almost completely unaware of her surroundings. 

What she needed, she thought, was a good, strong drink. She seldom drunk, but now seemed like a good time to start. She would just walk down to the Three Broomsticks and get some Firewhiskey. That would settle it all. She would stop being haunted by mad images of a long-dead love, and she could return to dedicating her life to teaching without distraction. 

She took several deep breaths, then looked around to take stock of her surroundings and figure out which direction she needed to go to get to Hogsmeade. 

It took her a moment to realize that she had no idea where she was, but as soon as she had figured that out, she realized that she must somewhere fairly deep in the Forbidden Forest. 

A simple Four-Point spell would give her all the information she needed to find her way back to familiar territory; she reached in to her robe pocket to get out her wand, and her fingers grasped empty air. She must have left it on her desk when she had fled the castle! She would have to follow her nose, and while Hermione was generally good at that kind of thing, there was no telling what obstacles would interfere. 

Surprisingly, she didn't run into anything especially dangerous as she walked through the seemingly endless forest. Night set in, but Hermione continued trying to find her way out of the forest. She had been walking for hours, and felt as if she could walk no more when finally, she decided to try to rest a little. Common sense told her that sleeping in the middle of a snow-covered, werewolf-infested forest was not a good idea, but exhaustion overcame her, and she collapsed at the foot of a tree, her eyes falling shut. 

She never opened them again. 

On the other side of the tree, Ron's breathing finally stopped. As he drifted back into the underworld, he felt cheated out of life for a second time. He had been unable to take the second chance he was given. 

"And, why, precisely, do you think I should let you go back?" The leering Lord of the Underworld asked, clearly very bored with Ron already. 

"True love," He responded defiantly. 

_These woods are lovely, dark and deep,_   
_But I have promises to keep,_   
_And miles to go before I sleep,_   
_And miles to go before I sleep._

-------------------------   
_The End_


End file.
